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Topic: Raise multiple waves of queens in the same hive at the same time? (Read 1768 times)

I used the Ben Harden method to raise my queens with great sucess last year. http://www.dave-cushman.net/bee/benhardenmethod.html This year I didn't take it as seriously and my success has been poor. Yesterday, I tried again but seriously and followed the book. There was one remaining capped queen cell from my previous weeks grafts in there as I put in 26 grafts yesterday. This got me to wondering. Can you put multiple waves (ie a new set every 5 days) of queen cells in the same hive and have them raised with success?

Not knowing the answer I opted to remove the queen cell but in the future I'd like to know if I could simply leave them alone and run multiple waves of queens at the same time in the same queen rearing hive. The hive is being fed 1:1 syrup and there is a healthy young queen laying steadily below the excluder.

I have only casually used the cloake method usually with limited success.

I would suspect the answer to your question would be somewhat to highly defined by the time between the waves. 5 days would seem to be a little short and would run counter to at least one of the stated benefits of the cloake method which is using the starter hive as a finisher.

cloak optional- :lol: RDY-BIt's seven days between grafting and harvesting the sealed queen cells. It's seven days between hatching and mating. And it's only five days between inserted the caged cells and their hatching. The seven day difference allows the two schedules to be slipped. And the two day difference between the seven and five days allows the hatched virgins to coexist. The 3-4 day interval it takes an egg to hatch is about the same time it takes for a virgin to be recognized also allows this timing to work so the grafting schedule versus the nuc schedule can be shifted 4 days apart. That is all grafts for the unit could be done on Thursday. And all nuc work for that unit is done on Sunday.